Laetare Jerusalem
by Smoltenica
Summary: Millicent MacPherson still mourns the loss of her baby son and contemplates how a woman can still be a mother when her only child is dead. Accompaniment piece to "A Mother's Musings" with a guest appearance by Jill Pole. Update: Millicent has tea with Jill's mother, Gladys.
1. Chapter 1

With a sigh, Millicent took her hat from the stand and glanced in the mirror.

_Fifty-one years old, _she thought, _and I'm already greying. _

She had noticed it most strongly on Friday, when she had dressed for the funeral of the Pevensie family and young Eustace Scrubb. Not that it had bothered her much- hair being such a superficial thing- but it had surprised her, just a little. She did not think that she could be _that _much older, for example, than Eustace's mother (poor Alberta Scrubb, fine features marred by severe frown lines and her tired, tired eyes)- but her hair bore so many strands of grey that it was a daily visible reminder of her age, of her mortality.

It was strange that hair should have become her marker for mortality, that grey had come to signify dying and ginger, life. At school she had resented those fiery carrot strands, forever tugged at and dipped in ink. At Sunday School she had hidden behind hats, until she was old enough to realise what it meant to say that she was loved by God.

But it had changed, it had all changed twenty-eight years ago. Twenty-eight years and a week and a half ago, to be more precise. Robert had shown hints of her hair when he had come, so quietly and peacefully _(too quietly and peacefully), _breathing his first (and few) unsteady breaths. Even now she could see him; tiny slip of a baby with a small button nose, piercing blue eyes and a wisp of ginger dusting his pale head.

"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away," she murmured, "blessed be the name of the Lord."

_I believe, oh Lord, overcome my unbelief! _

"Millicent?"

She felt, rather than heard, Samuel's footsteps behind her, and a smile touched her lips.

"Millicent, we should leave for church now."

Turning around, she placed her hat on her head and nodded.

"Yes," she said and laughed lightly, though it was a sad laugh and she knew that Samuel had noticed it. They would discuss it in the car, or after church, though, and now that she checked her watch, she saw that they were pressed for time. "Do you have the trays with you? It wouldn't do for us to be late to Mothering Sunday when we have the simnel cake."

But before they left the room Samuel took her in his arms in an almost crushing embrace and dusted a chaste kiss on her cheek.

_He knows, _she thought, without the faintest echo of surprise. _He is thinking of Robert, too._

* * *

><p>As they were leaving the church hall to make way for the 11am service and heading to the gardens for morning tea, Doris Millican approached her with a smile. Doris had always been cheerful, as a young girl in Sunday school to the almost but not-quite flighty young teacher, and now she was a mother. <em>Mother. <em>

The concept was still strange to Millicent's mind, strange enough that she dared not voice it. Young Doris Millican was more a mother on this Mothering Sunday than she, fifty-one year-old Millicent MacPherson, was. She tried not to feel jealous.

_Thou shalt not covet. _

The not-quite two years-old Mary bounced in Doris' arms, grinning toothily and clapping her hands together.

"Really Millicent, you outdid yourself with that cake today!" Doris exclaimed, before Millicent could greet her. "People will remember your wonderful simnel rather than any of the sermon or any of that motet. Reger, was it? You see, I've forgotten already! But oh, your cake- sugar and spice and everything nice, wasn't it, Mary?" Doris began cooing at her child.

_Sugar and spice and everything nice. _

Millicent had known her eyesight had begun to fail her when she had sat up the other night to stitch the hemline of an old dress, and she had slipped and pricked her finger. The intense sharp jolt, the sinking realisation of what had happened and the dull throb had faded within moments and she had forgotten the sensation, remembering only to make a note to buy a new thimble and perhaps invest in a pair of spectacles.

That selfsame sensation was right now hurtling through her body as though she were made of thin air.

"_What are young girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice!" _

"_Millicent, don't you think this is a little advanced? What if it's a boy, and not a girl?" _

_Laughing, swatting the papers at Samuel. _

"_I know it's a little girl. She'll have your lovely hair, not my wretched locks, and we'll sing her to sleep at night." _

But instead, Robert had come; her darling pale boy with his tufts of ginger. And he had been _more _than 'anything nice' that she might have hoped for in a girl, he had been her perfect little boy, and then the Lord had taken him away, seven hours after she had first held him.

"Millicent?"

She blinked, flustered, and smiled her way back into the present.

"Why, thank you, Doris. I hope Mary enjoyed it?"

She brushed lightly at the tiny trail of crumbs down the side of Mary's mouth and smiled as Mary waved her fists in the air.

"_Cake!" _she cried, "Mama, cake!"

"I will take that as a yes," Millicent smiled, and bent over so that she was eye to eye with Mary. "How are you today, Mary? Did you enjoy creche?"

Doris laughed.

"Oh Millicent, you know she's a terror at creche! A delight every other moment at church but oh, in the creche room! Don't you remember what she did when that poor girl, Jill Pole- God rest her soul- volunteered to help out in the creche room just last month?"

Millicent remembered very well the bite marks on Jill Pole's pale forearm. She had thought it amazing at the time that a child so young could bite so remarkably hard, particularly considering that they were only Mary's baby teeth. Jill had laughed it off, she recalled, and her mother, Gladys, had made some passing comment about how Jill had done far worse things at an older age than little Mary Millican. Doris, of course, had apologised profusely and baked a semolina cake in apology which Gladys donated to the morning tea table.

"_Heaven knows you do more than enough to feed us ungrateful folk," _Gladys had explained cheerfully, _"and nothing would make me gladder than to share this cake with others who will appreciate it." _

She was a lovely woman, Gladys; steady, dependable, warm. They had been part of the sewing group together, and she had helped Gladys on a particularly difficult pattern for a patchwork quilt. Yet she felt as though it was Gladys who had helped her more, sharing with such sincere ease passages of scripture, asking piercing questions that, often enough, Millicent had felt ashamed to not know the answer to.

"_But you don't need to know the answers, do you?" _Jill Pole had asked half shyly and half frankly as they had stood together one morning, serving tea. _"Mum says that you sometimes say sorry when she asks something and you don't have anything to say. I don't- I don't think that's necessary. I think sometimes when we say, "Why", we get no answer except "Because". And it's not until afterwards that we see the signs were staring us right in the face." _

Such words of wisdom from a sixteen year-old girl. Gladys had been a wonderful- and a richly blessed- mother. Millicent would miss Jill.

"God rest Jill- and God be with her mother," Millicent said as a realisation descended upon her, searing itself through her heart. "God be with Gladys Pole."

A look of horror flitted across Doris' face, and she covered her mouth with a hand. Mary reached out, still grinning toothily, and attempted to grab her mother's glove as though playing a game.

"Jill was an only child, wasn't she?" she said, and her eyes began to pool with tears. "Oh!- and Gladys has always been so lovely." She blinked, realising the foolishness of her words, and shook her head. "No, that's not what I mean to say. Whether or not Gladys is lovely isn't part of the matter at all, it's just- oh, poor Gladys! I don't know if I could bear it if anything happened to Mary."

"_Robert, Robert! Samuel, Samuel- our baby! My baby!" _

Millicent swallowed down the strange strands that had knotted in her throat.

"You would bear it, Doris," she said, feeling tired. "Christ bids us take up our cross."

Doris looked at her sympathetically, and Millicent had to fight the acerbic response on her lips- _"Don't look at me like that, you don't know suffering. You can look at me when your brother has died in service of this country in a war that didn't solve anything and you can look at me when your only child dies in your arms, but you! "_

_God give me grace, _she begged, as the anger flickered and bloomed inside. _God give me grace. _

Doris looked at her, still sickeningly sympathetic, and Millicent thought of poor Alberta Scrubb, from the funeral on Friday. It had been so much easier to show her grace, a woman who knew what it was to hurt and ache.

Inside the church, the organ began playing the final phrases of _Kingsfold. _

"_I heard the voice of Jesus say," _she heard Doris murmur in anticipation, and almost in response, the congregation inside sang those very words in a strangely unified voice, despite the various accents and pitches of its members.

In that moment, a ray of light escaped the clouds and rested upon Doris' face. Her eyes were closed, and her face was ever so slightly upturned. It was almost like an echo, or a very dim whisper, of Jesus' baptism, and Millicent found herself catching her breath. Only a moment, it lasted only a moment, but the light rested still against Doris' face, still in the movement of time.

_Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. _

_I have no child, Lord, _she thought, and she felt the tears, warm and ready, in her eyes. _I have no child, and you have made no promise either to me or to my husband as you did for Sarah, for Elizabeth. I am old, older than Hannah- and I am afraid that if you gave me a child, I would not give that child up to you as Hannah gave Samuel. _

Then Doris was laying her hand on her forearm, and Millicent felt her prayer ripple and scatter with the wind.

"Millicent, may I come visit you on Wednesday? I-" she cleared her throat. "I would like to speak with you and, and seek some guidance. And you've always been so wonderful. May I come?"

It was as though a small flicker from a single candle had touched her; merely a whisper and an echo, but even now there were shadows lightening, and she did not feel so cold.

"Please do come," she said, and meant every word. "I would love to have you for tea, Doris."

And as Doris left and Samuel came to help her wash the cups and plates, Millicent felt a strange, familiar peace settle like a haze around her heart.

"Samuel," she murmured, and he looked at her questioningly. "Samuel, the Lord is faithful. All is well. The Lord is faithful."

He put the cup down into the basin and smiled as he nodded.

"Yes," he said, "the Lord is faithful." He paused a moment before picking the cup up and rinsing it. "I was speaking with Andrew before- Andrew Pole."

Her eyes flickered up to meet his.

"It sounds as though Gladys isn't coping very well. He wanted to know if I could help him understand."

"And what did you say?"

"_Millicent. Shh, shh. The Spirit- the Spirit makes intercession for us, with groanings which cannot be uttered." _

Arms holding her, rocking her, in a darkened room of wet pillows and empty cots.

"What did you tell him, Samuel?"

He paused a moment, his brow slightly furrowed.

"I told him I was a terrible person to ask because a man isn't a mother, and we can't pretend to be. But-"

She already knew what he was going to say.

"I'll call on Gladys tomorrow," she promised, and he set down the spoons he was holding, wiped his hands on a nearby towel, smoothed her hair behind her left ear.

"What a wonderful wife the Lord has blessed me with," he said softly, and even though she had heard him say those words a hundred times over, and though they had been married thirty years, she still felt the beginnings of a small blush forming on her cheeks. "This world has to run on grace, or I would never have found her."

"What a wonderful life the Lord has blessed us with," she whispered back, catching his hand as it fell from her face.

_Doris, _she thought, and then, _Gladys. _And then a third figure flitted through her mind, and she grasped at it, glimpsed the woman's face, and knew. _Alberta. _

_I asked for children. _

And by the grace of God, still, she could be a mother.

* * *

><p><em>I heard the voice of Jesus say,<em>

"_I am this dark world's light;_

_look unto me, thy morn shall rise;_

_and all thy day be bright."_

_I looked to Jesus, and I found_

_in him my Star, my Sun;_

_and in that light of life I'll walk_

_till travelling days are done_

* * *

><p><em>AN: Happy Mothering Sunday to everyone. I know this is barely a fanfic, because it's mostly about an OC I've created whose life has come into contact with a few characters from the CoN, but I didn't know where else to put this. It's designed to add to the AMM ficverse, at any rate... _

_The hymn is set to the tune "Kingsfold", and the words are by Horatio Bonar.  
><em>


	2. Chapter 2

Gladys Pole set the mug onto the table, heavily. The aura of heaviness hung about her, too; seeped through the pores now visible on her cheeks, rested in the tiny creases of her forehead. It was so tangible, so thick one could hardly breathe, in her dark eyes.

And she was so _young. _

Millicent placed her own cup onto the saucer, untouched.

For a moment, neither woman spoke. Silence could be comforting, the swirls of steam rising from her tea could perhaps be beautiful; but here the silence was almost quantifiable _(the exact height, breadth and width of Jill Pole). _And it was _heavy. _

_"Gladys." Hesitant glove resting on immobile forearm, slipping a note into her purse: 'Tea at mine, Thursday at 3?' _

And Gladys had come. Of course she had come, of course she _would _come. Sadness was catching like that, even more catching than the flu, and she had only had to hear the bell to catch Samuel's gaze for him to nod and shuffle out the back to prune the perfectly pruned hedges, to sweep up lonesome petals that had not survived the fresh spring winds.

"I can't do it," Gladys said abruptly, the silence shattering. Millicent felt a shard lodge in her heart.

_Oh Lord, oh Lord, give me words! _

"Can't do what?" she asked, wishing her voice were gentler, more understanding.

_No matter what, it will be abrasive. _

"I can't clean out Jill's room," Gladys whispered, and her face crumpled like one of those napkins Millicent sometimes saw waiters shaking out in fancy restaurants. "I can't do it, because if I do then it-"

_Then it will feel real, _Millicent filled the words in, and the shard in her heart, only half dislodged, rent through thick, sinuous flesh. _It will be final, because Jill will never come home. _

She should speak. She should say something; this was what Andrew had spoken to Samuel about, what she had promised Samuel she'd do. This was what she had prayed for, wasn't it? And the Lord had answered. Her chance to mother, her chance to say to Gladys what she would have said to her own unborn daughters, her chance to comfort- and now, how useless, how painfully _useless _she was! Gladys would have been better off staying at home talking to the wall, or to a wardrobe!

_I couldn't get rid of Robert's crib. _

Perhaps she could say that. She opened her mouth, but the words drained in her throat, and she swallowed thickly.

Gladys cast her eyes downwards, and the heaviness pressed almost visibly about her shoulders as she fumbled in her purse.

_He healeth them that are broken in heart. Oh Lord, bring her healing! _

"Here," she murmured, fishing out her own handkerchief. "Gladys-"

But Gladys pulled out, with trembling hands, not a handkerchief, but a folded envelope. She unfolded it, pressed alongside the creases with tender, if shaking fingers, then pushed it hesitantly towards Millicent.

The envelope was still white. On the front, beside a small stamp featuring a small nightingale, was a simple address written with a consistent, firm hand:

_Miss Jill Pole_

_15 Aylesbury St_

_London Borough of Islington,_

_London EC1R_

She raised her eyes questioningly, but Gladys only bit her lip and looked away, so she cautiously turned the envelope over.

_Return to Eustace Clarence Scrubb_

_15 Redhill St_

_London Borough of Camden_

_London NW1 _

The seal was unbroken.

"I don't know what to do," Gladys said, and her mouth stretched out in a grotesque smile as the tears flowed over her cheeks, spilled onto the table. "Jill will never get it, and oh- is it so awful that I want to read it? No- don't answer, I know it is, I know it's- it's _invasive. _Andrew told me so-" she broke off here, bit her lip as she glanced almost fearfully at Millicent. "We- we had an argument. He told me I was- too unstable- at the present moment. And perhaps he was right. But I virtually bit his head off- and I don't think I should have done it."

Was she to produce a lecture or a sermon on loving one's husband? – But that could wait, and even before the thoughts had risen and taken form in her mind, she was distracted and they flew away like wisps of steam from cooling tea. And Gladys was still speaking.

"- and I know it's dreadfully invasive, and Jill would-" she actually did laugh here, eyes crinkling even as the tears continued to form and topple, form and topple, "Jill would tell me what a monstrous thing it is I've done. 'We're not to know any story but our own', she'd say- do you know she said that?"

Millicent did in fact know. She wasn't sure where the phrase originated; she certainly hadn't heard Father Bowyer perpetuate it from the pulpit, and it had seemed, for the most part, to be rather a phrase employed by the youth and young adults at St Matthias'. Indeed, she had heard it many times from such youth, from behind the tea and coffee table. She had heard Jill Pole whisper it, as if in comfort, to Edmund Pevensie (and oh, how it burned to know that he, too, was gone; such a sweet, serious and kind young man); had heard Peter Pevensie (how could so many be gone with one train? Oh Lord, how much pain could be visited upon a single family, upon a single parish, a single city?)- young, promising Peter Pevensie murmur it as though impacting a piece of seasoned wisdom to Eustace Scrubb.

But her tongue was frozen, and in any case she knew it was not the time to speak, so she merely nodded, reached out and laid her hand over Gladys', still trembling slightly. Gladys glanced at her briefly, and Millicent thought she saw a swirl of thankfulness intermingled with the scores of emotions she could not quite read (but could perhaps guess at).

"- if- if she were _here, _if she _had _read the letter- she mightn't have told me everything, but she'd have told me _something. _What am I to think of this? 'Just friends' don't write each other letters when they live so near each other in London and see each other so often at school, at church. And I _do _want to know, I would so like to have known- Andrew and I often spoke of Eustace, and he is- was- such a lovely boy-"

Gladys broke off, reaching for her handkerchief.

"I'm sorry, I haven't let you get a word in edgewise," she babbled, the words foaming and tumbling out like waves, Millicent's own tongue still thick in her throat. "I know I'm just being foolish, and it's not as if this is- well, it _could _have been important, terribly important, but I _know _that it's not- well-"

She looked hard at Millicent then, her eyes blazing, and Millicent knew the passion that lay behind them could not be washed away or glazed over by mere tears. "I _know _that Jill is with the Lord, and I _know _that there is comfort there; I _know _I shall see her again on that last day when the trump sounds. And I will hear the Lord say to her, 'Well done, good and faithful servant'", and we will be together, and that gives me _joy, _truly, Millicent, it does, but-"- and Gladys paused to draw breath.

A_nd also to avoid saying the words she is afraid to say, for fear of making it true, or for fear of being heretical. _

A strangely comforting sensation bloomed in Millicent's chest at the thought. _I know the trick too, _she thought, and, unbidden, _daughter! _– The last word grew and magnified and echoed in her heart till she was afraid she would smile, a ruinous smile that might only serve to widen the heavy silence that only now was dissipating from between them.

"I know that I will see her again on the last day," Gladys repeated in a whisper, her eyes dropping to the tabletop once more. She rolled her lower lip ever so slightly, as though biting the inside of her lip _(and the heaviness was still there, and she, so young, so young!) _

"But you will not be mother and daughter, not in the same sense," Millicent murmured, and Robert's face rose before hers again; his tiny button nose, his tinier, perfect, pale little fingers.

Gladys gave a dry, choking cry.

"Sixteen years, Millicent! I know that is ever so much more than what you were given and I ought to be thankful- and I _am, _I couldn't have had a sweeter child than Jill- but she was just starting to grow up, and I- I oughtn't have done it, perhaps, but I _treasured _them in my heart- hopes, and dreams, and fancies, and at times Andrew and I would _talk _and say-" she shook her head- "oh, foolish things, but-"

Millicent pressed her hand against Gladys'.

"They're not foolish, Gladys," she said firmly, and Gladys nodded even as she closed her eyes, let her head lower perceptibly.

"_When we have grandchildren, _that sort of thing," Gladys said, dully. "Not for now, not for a while, but it just _seemed_ things would go that way. Jill would graduate, perhaps find a job, settle down and have children. And she and Eustace have been close for several years now, and at times, I thought- so when I saw the letter-"

The heaviness was descending like a curtain between them. The tea had long ago stopped steaming; Millicent realised with something almost like shock that she had almost knocked her own cup over, that she was standing. It was not far to go, to walk around the table, to sit beside Gladys, but the curtain was falling thick and fast, and it was so _heavy _to breathe, a darkness that caught and swelled in her throat, and at one point she almost tripped over her own ankle in the crossing over.

Carefully, gently, Millicent eased herself into the chair beside Gladys, clasped the younger woman's cold white hand with both of hers.

"We all have dreams," she said softly, "hopes for how the future will look." _Sugar and spice and everything nice!_ "And we can't stop those dreams, anymore than we can stop being _ourselves- _but what we can do, what we must do, is give those dreams back to the Lord."

"All we have is His," murmured Gladys tiredly. "It is not- has never been- fully ours."

_Samuel, where is he? Where's our baby? Where's Robert? _

- _tired, tired eyes, and a broken voice- _

"No," she said, her hands and Gladys' hand blurring into one, swirling. "It was never fully ours. They were never fully ours- And-"

The words stuck in her throat like cement, but she felt something pushing at her heart and knew she had to speak.

"Even if Jill had lived, Gladys; even if my Robert had lived, we would have had to have given them up, let them into the wilderness, trusted them to the Lord and all His angels."

Even as she spoke, the weight lessened and the cement thinned. Words flowed more freely now, as water from a draining pond.

"But we do have one thing, Gladys, one thing that is ours, is ours _completely_- such that none can separate us from it. And what we _have _is of infinite worth. What God did not ask of Abraham He gave to _us, _and in our own Lord's precious Son we _have _life, and I _will _see my Robert again and you _will _see Jill, and it mightn't be the same, but it wouldn't have been the same in five, ten, twenty years here; and there, things eternal will never change! And we _have _that, Gladys, we have _that_!_" _

The glow of the words lingered in her heart, and, perhaps in the room, and the curtain seemed to lift, infinitesimally. Then suddenly, the room seemed to whirl, or perhaps it was still, and it was Millicent who was disoriented, moving this way and that, and guilt like a bag of cement settled in her stomach.

_A lecture, this woman wants comfort and I give a lecture! _

The silence paused, swelled, and Millicent could almost feel the invisible life pounding within it, saw the curtain with certainty looming closer, darker, _heavier. _

- Then she felt it.

Not much, just the tiniest of gestures, but it was definite- a slump in Gladys' hand, the slight relaxation of shoulders, the almost imperceptible deflation of one about to breathe fresh, new air. The curtain was flushed back as waves came, billowing, bringing with them the clean, pure air of joy, of relief.

She met Gladys' eyes and smiled hesitantly.

"I just wanted to see Jill grow up," Gladys whispered.

Wordlessly, without breaking her gaze, Millicent held out the letter. Gladys blinked almost as in confusion, looked at it, and for the briefest moment a smile illuminated her face.

"We needn't know anyone's story but our own," she said, her voice high and thin and shaking but firm. She took the letter, held it briefly, smoothed the creases once more, then began looking about the room. Millicent guided her to the wastepaper basket, and after a brief pause, Gladys dropped the envelope, turned away.

"Thank you for tea, Millicent," she said, and Millicent smiled at her.

"You are free any time," she replied- then, suddenly, Gladys dropped her purse and had flung her arms about her, and she was holding the younger woman, could smell her perfume, the faint odour of starch on her shirt, the floral shampoo in her soft, wispy hair, and she closed her eyes, inhaling deeply.

_The Lord doth build up Jerusalem_

_And gather together the outcasts of Israel_

* * *

><p><em>AN: Sooo this is my 'sorry I haven't updated A Mother's Musings recently' post. Also I think Gladys Pole doesn't deserve enough recognition, and her grief, though painful, would be slightly different to Alberta Scrubb's. _


End file.
